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For weeks now, the clumsy cicadas of Brood II have been crawling
out of the dirt from North Carolina to Connecticut after spending
most of their lives sucking roots underground. But before their
noisy
mating fest ends, you can help document the emergence using
your smartphone.

If you share a picture of the cicadas on Instagram — whether
they're crunchy brown nymphs or red-eyed, winged adults — the
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) wants you to geo-tag the
photo and mark it with the hashtag #cicadasinmyhood.

WCS plans to compile all photos submitted with the hashtag into
an interactive, user-generated map on its website:
http://www.wcs.org/cicadas/

Scientists are intrigued by the insects' life-cycle, which may be
the longest of any insect known. Brood II is one of 12
cicada broods in the eastern half of the United States that
matures every 17 years. (There are other populations that come
out every 13 years.)

"Cicadas are as harmless as they are interesting," Craig Gibbs,
an entomologist with the WCS, said in a statement. "They appear
every 17 years in such great numbers that they have no natural
defenses other than sheer numbers. And, for the first time,
people can share their experiences with this event in real-time
with Instagram and other social media."

A new generation of
periodical cicadas in Brood II is hatching in trees along the
Eastern Seaboard now. They will head underground and they won't
come back again until they're ready to mate, in 2030. By then,
who knows what we'll be using to track their emergence.

Even if you are Instagram-averse, there are other ways you can
help document Brood II. Citizen scientists are reporting their
sightings at magicicada.org
to help researchers at the University of Connecticut map the
emergence. Another project, Urban
Buzz, is seeking mailed-in cicada samples to look for
irregularities on the insects' bodies, which could be indicative
of environmental stress caused by urbanization.